Kaleidoscope
by Ishie
Summary: There were things Sharon knew and things she felt, and things she shouldn't remember.


**Written for: **lyssie, femme_fic 2009 on livejournal; prompt: Sharon Valerii (or Agathon), Anastasia Dualla, "things remembered (for instance, how does Sharon know Dee carries her grandfather's knife?)"**

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There were things Sharon knew and things she felt, and things she shouldn't remember.

The part of her that understood the complexities of resurrection and consciousness transfer _didn't_ understand how she had so many of the other one's, Boomer's, memories. Everything up until the attack on the Colonies was crystal clear in her mind: names, dates, places, feelings, thoughts. The feel of Chief's hot skin under her hands, the rush of blood in her ears as she banged into the hangar deck for the umpteenth time, the scent of fresh frybread in the marketplace on Troy where she last saw her mother.

That the mother never existed, and that she had never set foot on Troy in any of her bodies, didn't matter. Somehow, they'd uploaded a lifetime of false memories and affection for people she couldn't have met before she woke up in a vat of cool, viscous liquid. She remembered her previous body, the throbbing pain of broken legs and the glint of sunshine off the car that had struck her as she tried to hurry across the plaza in Gemenon's capital city the day before the attacks. Then there was nothing, and then there was a head full of things she'd never done.

She waded through the wilderness in Helo's wake, watching the rain trickle down the back of his neck and tried to puzzle out how the Five and the Six had managed it. Or maybe it was a One who'd figured out how to access the living memories of a copy that hadn't yet died - they always seemed to know more than they were willing to share. Then again, she'd heard rumors that some of the Threes had a disturbing tendency to resurrect more often than the norm, even before the detente ended. All those downloads must have had some purpose.

She knew it couldn't have been a Two - she had never known one who paid the slightest bit of attention to anything but arcane nonsense.

Helo dropped into a crouch and she followed suit, remembering to pretend fatigue for a change. He craned his head and looked like he was listening hard for sounds of pursuers (he really didn't need to bother; they had been walking in a circle for the better part of the day and she didn't sense anyone else nearby).

His voice was a soft rasp above the drip of rain on leaves and she nodded at the sound of it, if not the words. She took point and headed away from the circular path she'd been nudging him along for hours, up into the hills.

Back when she'd lived on Caprica - if she'd ever really lived on Caprica - she had gone for a drive through these hills the night before she left for flight training. Then, she lay on the grass under a starry sky and dreamed of what the future would hold. Now, she huddled under a rocky overhang and wondered why she kept remembering these things as real.

While Helo slept, she stood and stretched and trudged down the hill to where the Six was waiting for her.

"The human resistance fighters are getting closer."

"I know. I'm taking him back toward the city before we run into them."

"Good." The Six stared at her, like she could sense that something had gone wrong in her programming. "Are you any closer to your goal?"

"He trusts me," was what she said as she walked away.

_Just like before_ was what she didn't.

When Helo told her later that he couldn't stand to lose her, she exulted in a job well done while his hand slid down along her back. Instead of his face, or the forest, or the gray wet clouds, she saw her bunk and the Admiral's grimace and the battered picture of her mother that she'd stuck in her old flight sim console.

At night, she dreamed. It wasn't something she remembered doing before she set out on this mission, dreaming. Maybe she did and maybe she didn't, but either way there was nothing to prepare her for the candy-colored assault on her senses that kicked her awake more often than not. She woke up on the verge of tears, for people she'd never known and would never see again.

Once they were back on _Galactica_, even though she'd never been there to leave in the first place, it was hard to tell where the dreams ended and her memories, no, _Boomer's_ memories began.

She was locked away in isolation but she could taste the smoke in her throat and the Virgon Brew on her tongue. Starbuck's laugh was too forced and loud and the room too bright. She'd been dealt horrible frakking cards all night and she took the ribbing in stride when she threw down her cards and left the room. The decking wobbled under her feet and she stumbled headfirst through the hatch into the nearest head.

What's-her-name from CIC, Dualla, was brushing her teeth at one of the sinks and gave her a nervous, foamy smile in the mirror.

"Just getting off shift?" Sharon asked and banged into one of the stalls. The door wouldn't latch behind her and she gave up sooner than she would have if she hadn't tried to match Tigh drink for drink.

"No, I just kind of lost track of time," Dualla mumbled, then spit.

Sharon grunted, more concerned with stopping the ship from spinning around her than with making small talk with a girl she pretty much only knew as a voice on the other end of the comm.

Dualla was still standing at the sink when Sharon was done. She washed her hands, flung droplets of water on the floor and somehow knocked everything off the edge of the next sink. When she crouched down to pick them up, Dualla put a thin hand out to stop her.

"I don't even know why I carry this thing around," she said as she picked up the knife and slipped it into her pocket. "Not much call for it up here."

Sharon steadied herself with a hand on the sink above her as the room spun lazily around her like the stars over Troy.

"Still," Dualla said, "sometimes it's nice to have a reminder of home, you know?"

Sharon smiled. "Yeah. I know."

She curled up on the bunk, with her back to the guards and the cool metal of the sink still tingling against her palm, and hugged her knees to her chest. These kinds of memories were her most precious, even though they would never be hers.


End file.
